BARACK
OBAMA
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THE LIFE AND RISE OF
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REMNICK
0 WITII A NEW EPILOGUE
...
DAVID REMNICK's
dehnitive and acclaimed
portrait is Hinsight[ful]
and nuanced. ... Writing
with emotional precision and
a sure knowledge of politics,
Mr. Remnick situates
Mr. Obama's career hrmly
within a historical context."
- The New York Times
Hßrilliantly constructed,
Hawlessly written."
-Los Angeles Times
NOW IN PAPERBACK
AND EBOOK
WITH A NEW EPILOGUE
READ AN EXCERPT
VintageBooks.com
62 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13 & 20, 2011
T eri. IsabeY s heart starts beating again.
The gray-haired doctor turns to me and
" T 1 . " dI
says, we ve mInutes, an cannot
comprehend what he is saying. But then
I realize: what he is saying is that Isabel
was clinically dead for twelve minutes.
Then her heart stops beating again, a
young resident is halfheartedly com-
pressing her chest, waiting for us to tell
her to stop. We tell her to stop. She stops.
I n my hastily suppressed visions, 1'd
foreseen the moment of my child's
death. But what 1'd imagined, despite
my best efforts, was a quiet, filmic mo-
ment in which Teri and I held IsabeYs
hands as she peacefully expired. I could
not have begun to imagine the inten-
sity of the pain we felt as the nurses re-
moved all the tubes and wires and ev-
eryone cleared out and Teri and I held
our dead child-our beautiful, ever-
smiling daughter, her body bloated
with liquid and battered by compres-
sions-kissing her cheeks and toes.
Though I recall that moment with ab-
solute, crushing clarity, it is still unimag-
inable to me.
And how do you step out of a mo-
ment like that? How do you leave your
dead child behind and return to the va-
cant routines of whatever you might call
your life? Eventually, we put Isabel down
on the bed, covered her with a sheet,
signed whatever papers needed to be
signed, packed our stuff: her toys, our
clothes, the iPod dock, the food contain-
ers, the debris of the before. Outside the
room, somebody had put up a screen to
give us privacy; all the good people who
had rooted for Isabel were now gone.
Carrying, like refugees, our large plastic
bags full of things, we walked to the ga-
rage across the street, got into our car,
and drove on the meaningless streets to
my sister-in-Iaws apartment.
I don't know what mental capacity is
required for comprehending death, but
Ella seemed to possess it. When we told
her that her little sister had died, there
was a moment of clear understanding
on her face. She started crying in a way
that could only be described as unchild-
like, and said, "I want another little sis-
ter named Isabel." We're still parsing
that statement.
Teri, Ella, and I-a family miss-
ing one-went home. It was Novem-
ber 1st, the Day of the Dead. A hun-
dred and eight days had passed since
the diagnosis.
The next day, we took Ella to school.
At pickup time, her best friend ran to his
mother and said, "Mommy, Mommy!
Ellà s little sister died!"
O ne of the most despicable religious
fallacies is that suffering is enno-
bling-that it is a step on the path to
some kind of enlightenment or salva-
tion. Isabefs suffering and death did
nothing for her, or us, or the world. We
learned no lessons worth learning; we ac-
quired no experience that could benefit
anyone. And Isabel most certainly did
not earn ascension to a better place, as
there was no place better for her than at
home with her family. Without Isabel,
Teri and I were left with oceans of love
we could no longer dispense; we found
ourselves with an excess of time that we
used to devote to her; we had to live in a
void that could be filled only by Isabel.
Her indelible absence is now an organ in
our bodies, whose sole function is a con-
tinuous secretion of sorrow.
Ella talks about Isabel often. When
she talks about her death, she does so
cogently, her words deeply felt; she is
confronted by the same questions and
longings that confront us. Once, before
falling asleep, she asked me, 'Why did
Isabel die?" Another time, she told me,
"I don't want to die." Not so long ago,
she started talking to Teri, out of the
blue, about wanting to hold IsabeY shand
again, about how much she missed Isa-
befs laughter. A few times, when we
asked her if she missed Isabel, she re-
fused to respond, exhibiting an impa-
tience that was entirely recognizable to
us-what was there to talk about that
was not self-evident?
Mingus is still going steadily about
his alternative-existence business. He
lives around the corner yet again, with
his parents and a variable number of
siblings, but he does stay with us a lot.
He has had his own children now-
three sons, at one point, one of whom
was called Andy. When we went ski-
ing, Mingus preferred snowboarding.
When we went to London for Christ-
mas, Mingus went to Nebraska. He
plays chess ("chest," in Ellà s parlance)
pretty well, it seems. He is also a good
magician. With his magic wand, Ella
says, he can make Isabel reappear. .